OMG...Is This Real?

25 Replies, 10079 Views

Lol, I'm showing one of my other hobbies here a bit lol, being from the UK and with a dad who remembered the original run of Thunderbirds etc. as well as Dinky and the like, I grew up with these too, and I suppose its testament to how well made the Anderson canon was, that I'm still enjoying them as much now as I ever have -
In a way, I was fortunate to be born in 1998 because around 3 years later in 2001, as I was just the right sort of age, Thunderbirds experienced a major revival that lasted through to about 2004, and of course I had most of the toys from that era as a result, as well as some of the older stuff secondhand - I still have most of them somewhere xD

The revival sort of died in 2004 though thanks to Hollywood - Basically, Universal Studios happened to own the film rights to Thunderbirds, a side-effect from them becoming the de-facto owners of the Anderson library in the 1990's for a short time, before selling them to 'Carlton' - Carlton was the London division of ITV at the time; Without writing an essay on the subject (it would be very easy to), the original UK ITV was run by a set of region-based companies on a franchise system, where companies bid to run the service for contract periods; This meant that ITV was effectively different networks and programming for every region of the country, but all the ITV networks pooled major programmes for national broadcast, so shows like Thunderbirds, Space 1999 etc. were always shown nationally.

Carlton was, by this time, the successor to ATV, the company formerly responsible for London and the Midlands ITV system during the era of Anderson's work, and ATV was the company he sold almost all his work to, having a close working relationship with station head Lew Grade, who also owned ITC, a separate company under common ownership that sold ATV and other programmes across the world, as well as distribution of movies. Interestingly, after Anderson stopped distributing through ITC in the 1970's, more puppets would replace him - Jim Henson worked with Grade to bring the Muppets to TV via ITC!

The whole reason that Universal ended up with the Anderson rights was because eventually, ITC was bought by PolyGram, who in turn were bought by Universal - ATV was wound up by the end of the 1970's and its successor, Central would eventually become part of Carlton, so it was seen as a logical move to re-unite the ITC library, mostly made up of old ITV programming, with what remained of its original broadcaster. However, this didn't include the rights to a then-in-development Thunderbirds movie...

Basically, Universal had the contractual rights to see through a live-action Thunderbirds movie, with Gerry's blessing. At least, that was the idea.

Here's the bad news - After being in development hell since the mid 1990's, Gerry and his former wife (and major Thunderbirds contributor) Sylvia were bought on to supervise. Gerry quit after only about 2 weeks, because he probably saw exactly what was happening.

Needless to say, Summer 2004 saw 'Thunderbirds', an overhyped rehash of the plot of Spy Kids, now starring all the IP of Thunderbirds, because why not?

Now, in the movie's defence, the soundtrack, SFX, some of the actors, and many of the visuals were actually excellent, and still kind of hold up.

Not defensible is the excessive product placement (practically every damn scene) from Ford Motors and Unilever ice-cream, the pretty poor child actors (although Vanessa Hudgens has since got better, so she gets the pass), the criminal underuse of the Thunderbirds, and (biggest sin because it's a British franchise), the immense lack of continuity in the final scenes, shot in London (guess they were rubbing salt into the wound)...

The movie tanked, Gerry went on record to say, and I quote 'It was the biggest load of crap i've ever seen in my life', and the sole audience now are kids who've probably seen the show, and ex-kids who watch the movie with a beer for a laugh (wait, that's probably just me then Big Grin )

But yeah effectively, Thunderbirds '04 killed much of the mainstream Anderson revival in it's home country for over a decade, till ITV (Carlton merged with rival Granada, between them both they owned the entire ITV regional system, and converted the service to a single national service called ITV) decided to work with Pukeko Pictures (Lord of The Rings anyone?) to bring Thunderbirds back in CGI; the new revival, Thunderbirds Are Go! was nothing short of a phenomenal success, and actually worked to establish a much more solid canon for the Anderson universe, by making references to most of his previous works; establishing that all probably took place in the same universe, across different times; And yes, Space 1999 gets a couple shout outs in there too, UFO as well, so maybe one day we'll see a proper attempt at a live-action Thunderbirds; Guess we can live in hope lol ?

For now anyway, the revival efforts continue as most of the Anderson canon is avaliable here on Bluray, DVD, and on BritBox (ITV's answer to Netflix), and honestly, I can't recommend them enough to anyone, especially people who appreciate the model work in things like Thomas; As previously noted, Thomas and Freinds was in part a legacy of Anderson's work, being worked on by many alumni from his studios in the early series made by Clearwater, and the similarities in technology and special effects are pretty clear if you watch both together Smile
Been building Plarail worlds since 2001; Building when I can in 2023 Cool

Messages In This Thread
OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-19-2021, 01:06 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by GreatGordonFan - 12-19-2021, 01:08 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-19-2021, 01:19 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Mister No - 12-19-2021, 01:34 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-19-2021, 03:47 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Off The Rails - 12-20-2021, 01:59 AM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by chrisjo - 12-20-2021, 08:55 AM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Mister No - 12-20-2021, 02:09 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-20-2021, 09:32 AM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by chrisjo - 12-20-2021, 11:14 AM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-20-2021, 01:51 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Off The Rails - 12-20-2021, 05:33 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Mister No - 12-20-2021, 07:16 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-20-2021, 07:27 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by chrisjo - 12-20-2021, 07:38 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Mister No - 12-21-2021, 01:12 AM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Plarail Man UK - 12-21-2021, 01:47 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Mister No - 12-21-2021, 02:19 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-21-2021, 08:42 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Mister No - 12-22-2021, 09:15 AM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Plarail Man UK - 12-22-2021, 08:57 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-22-2021, 11:54 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Mister No - 12-23-2021, 01:34 AM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-23-2021, 03:51 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Plarail Man UK - 12-24-2021, 02:28 PM
RE: OMG...Is This Real? - by Super - 12-24-2021, 07:29 PM



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